Widespread search of electronic files has become commonplace with several commercial “search engines” offering the ability to search using keywords. Access to such services has been provided to mobile personal appliances such as PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) and of course cellular telephones. Where alphabetic or syllabic data is to be entered, unambiguous entry or reduced-size disambiguating systems are in widespread use. This may require that a browser be invoked and the appliance caused to replicate the performance of a computer terminal.
The use of keyword searches has also been adopted to allow the user to perform local searches. In those situations, the user is permitted to enter a keyword in order to search content that is stored on the appliance (i.e. stored “locally”) at least temporarily. Typically indices may be created that allow an entered keypad sequence to be rapidly matched to content which may in turn facilitate access to the sought material. An example of such functionality is described in the published US patent application, publication number 20060158436, titled User Interface With Augmented Searching Characteristics, hereby incorporated by reference. Since an appliance is typically used by only one user, the local content is often stored in a manner that is in the language commonly used by the user, and this enables local keyword searches to be performed easily.
A search beyond the boundaries of the local environment of the appliance may be achieved in many ways. However, a limiting factor is that the symbology used to create the search keywords is limited to alphabetic structures of a particular language and may not be applied easily to other languages, especially languages which are ideographic in nature. Ideographic languages are normally handled by localization techniques applied at the session level by such methods as mode selection.